March 29, 2012

NHS priorities

Should taxpayers' money be spent on drink-fuelled injuries, or on better cancer treatment?

Manchester Council wants to explore whether drunks who are taken to A&E could be charged for health treatment. (They might not pay, but that's a separate issue.)

A leading councillor admitted charging drunks for hospital treatment could prove difficult but said the council is determined to take radical steps.

More than 50,000 people a year are admitted to hospitals in Greater Manchester with alcohol-related illnesses and injuries. This is estimated to add up to some £400m annually, in Greater Manchester alone.

Project this figure across England and the total is - well - rather big.

To govern is to choose, as the saying goes. This seems a choice well worth debating - if we can find anyone to speak up for the drunks.

Implementation would undoubtedly raise all sorts of problems, but the principle seems a good one.

This wouldn't be about cutting health spending, it would be about priorities - using the available money in the way most likely to command taxpayers' support.

9 comments:

"Manchester Council wants to explore whether drunks who are taken to A&E could be charged for health treatment."

They've already paid for the service (whether they wanted to or not). And then they've contributed even more thanks to the insanely high tax on booze.

The very idea that they should then be forced to pay even more to access "universal" health-care is a joke. Does the council believe that anyone who needs hospital treatment due to causes they might have had some control over should be charged?

Hi Andrew, you say that the point for collecting it is to offset the costs of alcohol to society. That's your assumption but it's not mine.

The difference between you slipping down the stairs and the Manchester drunks is that they've knowingly made themselves incapable, and there are evidently lots of them. They've "put themselves in harm's way".